Two people wearing life jackets were rescued from a perilous dam on the Willamette River near Springfield on Saturday, when temperatures in the Willamette Valley reached triple digits.
Low head dams such as this one, colloquially known as “killer dams” or “drowning machines,” were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people in the U.S. from 2018 to 2020, according to the National Weather Service.
The families of a Eugene couple who drowned in 2022 while kayaking over a low head dam on the Long Tom River filed a pair of $50 million lawsuits against the state of Oregon, Lane County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in April for failing to post signs upriver warning of the mortal danger.
The pair who ran into trouble Saturday in Glenwood east of Eugene were luckier, in part because they wore life jackets, rescuers said.
The rescue happened just after 2 p.m., when the inflatable raft the two were floating on became trapped below the dam where water strains but objects get stuck.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in April that low head dams are submerged in rivers and often don’t have big drop-offs. That means they are difficult for people to see upriver — or to realize the imminent danger.
The National Weather Service has posted photos of how hidden the dams can be.
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit oregonlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
